Summer 2009

before the year is out, Congress and the Obama administration will try to do for the entire nation what only one state, Massachusetts, has been able to do for its residents: pass a law that attempts universal health insurance coverage. On its face, the Bay State’s success — more than 430,000 newly insured residents since(...)

INTRO TEXT when caroline huang remembers her first job out of graduate school, tension creeps into her soft-spoken voice even now, almost 20 years later. The speech recognition scientist went to work for a Massachusetts software company in 1991, and inside two years, she was eager to move. “It was very stressful,” says Huang, of(...)

The Census Bureau reported in June that the number of Americans over the age of 3 living in households with Internet access inched past the two-thirds mark, to 67.1 percent, as of November 2007. But as the map below shows, regional differences persisted: In New Hampshire, having access to the Web was almost as common(...)

You know that municipal governments are in dire financial straits when they start looking to tax-exempt properties — schools, hospitals, and other nonprofit institutions — for new revenue. Many colleges and universities make voluntary payments in lieu of taxes (known as PILOT agreements) to their host communities, but that doesn’t always satisfy local officials. Remarks(...)

gov. patrick, the Boston Globe, MassINC, the Boston Foundation, the business community, and President Obama are all supporting charter schools as a key step toward school improvement, but a careful look at the data suggests that these schools offer no magic bullet for school improvement. In general, charter schools (and Boston pilot schools) perform no(...)

It was grafifying to see the Legislature pass tax credit transparency legislation as part of the state budget, but it was disappointing that lawmakers opted for the “lite” version. The legislation, originally filed by Gov. Deval Patrick and a direct outgrowth of reporting by CommonWealth last spring, summer, and fall, should start to shed some(...)

in 2008, the state of Utah was facing a number of compelling issues. Utility costs were rising, but there was no funding available to retrofit public buildings. Our government workforce was showing a demographic imbalance, with the state finding it difficult to attract employees just beginning their careers. State agencies wanted to provide better service,(...)